Album Review: Occultation – Dysylumn

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Dysylumn as discomfort, pain, or burning when urinating. Oh wait! That’s dysuria. Released in 2018, I’m baffled as to why Andrew sent Dysylumn‘s “Occultation” to me for review. He’s either living in the past or knows I’ve got fuck all better to do with my time. (It’s being re-released on vinyl..)

Now, there are a few elephants in the room that I need to address before I can provide a full and descriptive review of “Occultation.” Firstly, who writes press releases? Is there one guy sitting in his room pumping these pieces of shit out? Whoever it is, for God’s sake, stop! The uninformative drivel that whoever okayed this thinks is an acceptable press release produced two amazingly shit sections that I thought were worth sharing:

“DYSYLUMN’s Occultation took this French duo to the precipice of the abyss – and they dove fully in”.

“One could easily qualify it as “hypnotic,” except DYSYLUMN’s overt physicality safely evades the usually defeatist tendencies of so much “depressive” black metal…”

With a sigh of resignation, I’ll move onto the second elephant in the room. Dysylumn seem to be defined, or define themselves, as “Progressive Black/Death Metal.” I don’t get this. There’s not a lot here that I’d consider “Prog.” “Occultation” is vastly more akin to droning Post-Black Metal. Long songs. Simple riffs. There’s even some slower, doomier passages. “Embrasement” is a nice example of the latter.

Philosophers have posed questions that have made men scratch their heads for millennia. Who closes the bus door when the bus driver gets off? If your shirt isn’t tucked into your pants, are your pants tucked into your shirt? Well, Dysylumn pose their own noodle-scratcher: What’s worse than one instrumental on an album? The answer is three. Three fucking instrumentals. “Occultation” has an Intro and rounds out with two, long-arse instrumentals. Perhaps the question should have been: Why the fuck would you have three instrumentals on an eight track album? It’ll come as no surprise to anyone who reads my reviews that instrumentals in Metal baffle me. “Ouroboros” and “Décorporation” are fine musically, but they could’ve had vocals. “Ouroboros“ and “Décorporation” should’ve had vocals. The music is not interesting enough to carry either song.

Now, I’ve taken a bit of a swipe at this album. So, it may surprise people to know that I enjoyed a lot of it. When they’re firing on all cylinders, Dysylumn create a cool, depressing atmosphere (fuck what the press release says). The title track does this well. But, what I’m sick of is all the fucking posturing in Black Metal. If your music is solid, it’ll speak for itself. Press releases can blow a goat.